Apple / FBI Legal Battle

[Don]

SO - the latest is that the FBI, at the last minute, requested a motion to cancel the hearing on Tuesday; the judge approved the motion. The FBI says it's because they've been approached by a third party who says they can hack the phone.

Mixed reactions. Some folks think this means Apple's won; but the FBI only requested a cancellation of this hearing. The lawsuit hasn't been dropped. Electronic security experts are a little disappointed, because they know this subject is going to come up again, and were hoping to get some resolution through the legal system now.

Further, if it's true that another party can hack the phone, that casts a shadow on Apple's products not being as secure as they've led everyone to believe. However, it'll be about two weeks before the FBI can confirm that this works.

Another aspect to consider is, now that someone else has volunteered to hack the phone and the FBI has accepted - what does that say about the FBI's case against Apple? Some take it to mean that Apple cares about its customers, while the FBI gave a prime example of the government not wanting individuals to have privacy. That the FBI is about to "let Apple off the hook" because they can hack the phone through a voluntary third party seems to strengthen the concept that the FBI was merely using the legal system to strong-arm Apple.

This battle about privacy is far from over, as evidenced by responses to the attack in Belgium yesterday. From TechDirt:

The first up was Rep. Adam Schiff, who quickly insisted that he had no actual facts on the matter, but we should be concerned about encryption:“We do not know yet what role, if any, encrypted communications played in these attacks,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said in a statement.

“But we can be sure that terrorists will continue to use what they perceive to be the most secure means to plot their attacks,” he added. Schiff, of course, is the same guy who just a few months ago was loudly promoting CISA, saying we needed it to protect our privacy from hackers. Of course CISA doesn't do that. You know what does? Encryption. The very encryption Schiff now wants to blame.

Not one to be left out, Senator Dianne Feinstein jumped in with a thinly veiled statement in support of her supposedly soon to be released bill, mandating backdoors in encryption:“We must use all the tools at our disposal to fight back,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat and vice chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement on Tuesday. “The way to prevent attacks like this is to develop good intelligence and always be vigilant.”"All the tools" likely means including her plans to break encryption.

And, of course, the many in the press are no help at all. There have been reports that a talking head on NPR blamed encryption this morning, while a NY Times reporter, Rukmini Callimachi -- who was the lead reporter on that ridiculous article yesterday insisting that the lack of encryption was evidence of encryption -- is tweeting up a storm claiming that ISIS is now encouraging the use of encryption, even though the questionably-sourced document she links to (which is written in English?!?) isn't actually recommending encryption, but things like Tor and VPNs, which are designed to merely mask your IP address.

Our innate ignorance of technology, especially at the policy-maker level, is depressing.

 

[InTheLight]

Another aspect to consider is, now that someone else has volunteered to hack the phone and the FBI has accepted - what does that say about the FBI's case against Apple? Some take it to mean that Apple cares about its customers, while the FBI gave a prime example of the government not wanting individuals to have privacy. That the FBI is about to "let Apple off the hook" because they can hack the phone through a voluntary third party seems to strengthen the concept that the FBI was merely using the legal system to strong-arm Apple.

The FBI has a search warrant to examine the contents of the phone. They are following the Constitution and are legally entitled to hack the phone. Any allusion to the FBI having a vendetta against Apple and wanting to strong arm them is speculation.

 

[Don]

The FBI has a search warrant to examine the contents of the phone. They are following the Constitution and are legally entitled to hack the phone. Any allusion to the FBI having a vendetta against Apple and wanting to strong arm them is speculation.

The search warrant to examine the contents of the phone was never in question. The legality of the FBI to hack the phone was never in question. The court order to compel the product maker to hack their own product and thus introduce a vulnerability into their own product, was the point of contention about this whole situation.

Any court order to compel someone to do something is an example of "strong arm." So yeah, I'm speculating.

 

[preachinjesus]

I don't doubt there are ways to hack into the phone. As I've been told by friends in the tech industry...everything can be hacked at some point.

The root issue here continues to stand: does the FBI have the authority to force a public company to create a bypass so federal agencies can get into private citizens' devices.

According to the Constitution and the founding principles of this nation, they do not have that authority.